CrawfordHollow wrote:Well, saying that the Buddha and the deities exist in an "eternal platonic realm" sounds pretty dualistic to me. The notion that they are "up there" and the ture believers "down here" can communicate with them also sounds pretty dualistc.

Either way, maybe you could answer a few of my questions that I posted.

Question: You talked about the peaceful and wrathful deities. Most Westerners don’t know they exist. Is it possible to recognize fear, anger and wrathful things in bardo?

Rinpoche: This is the reason Trungpa Rinpoche had the Tibetan Book of the Dead translated, printed, and distributed everywhere. It is very beneficial in introducing people to the bardo.

Yes, most westerners don't know that they exist and with Dharma deteriorating in the east I wonder how many of them knows that they exist in the east.

To put the view in the right perspective.

These gods are in and around us, they form our bodies, they orchester this empirical reality for us and they exist in the noumena. The Vajarasattva consorts who appear in male and female forms are real they are not symbolic, they emanate from me not separate from me.

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

I get the impression that every time there is a discussion about comparing Buddhism with other esoteric doctrines, it boils down to "Well, yes, it sounds exactly the same, except Buddhism says that none of this stuff ultimately exists, so this is totally different."

These gods are in and around us, they form our bodies, they orchester this empirical reality for us and they exist in the noumena. The Vajarasattva consorts who appear in male and female forms are real they are not symbolic, they emanate from me not separate from me.

How do you take the position that nothing exists outside of the mind, and then claim these beings exist outright?

"We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know." - Albert Einstein

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?"-Eleanor Roosevelt

The beauty is all those worlds emanate from "YOU" and they don't exist independent of you.

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

These gods are in and around us, they form our bodies, they orchester this empirical reality for us and they exist in the noumena. The Vajarasattva consorts who appear in male and female forms are real they are not symbolic, they emanate from me not separate from me.

How do you take the position that nothing exists outside of the mind, and then claim these beings exist outright?

I said, this "empirical reality" doesn't exist independent of the mind not that nothing exists independent of the human mind. Please be careful when you put words in my mouth.

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

"Buddhism" may have them.But if you say they actually exist, meaning that they are beings in the sense of possessing independent faculties of cognition,and are not just creations of the human imaginationPROVE IT.If you can prove it, then the atheist view is invalid.If you cannot prove it, then the atheist view is something you must tolerate,regardless of what you yourself believe.

Or, perhaps you may see that the distinction of atheist/non-atheistitself does not occur anywhere outside of the human imagination....

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

I personally think that things like rebirth and karma are pretty necessary concepts, and that without them the whole system doesn't hang together as well. However, I can't force people to believe the way that I do -- people will believe or they won't, and it's possible they may change their minds at least once in their lives but no one can force them to do so. It really isn't your right or mine to try. You can put forth your own viewpoint (hopefully in a tactful way), but that's all you can really do. Making sweeping pronouncements and ridiculing others is not going to change any minds -- it's going to make people not take you seriously and not want to hear what you have to say. Besides, I'm pretty sure that ridiculing others would fall under wrong speech.

You also keep bringing up deities as examples of things that real Buddhists should know about. Yet, there are many schools of Buddhism besides Vajrayana -- I'm not secular, but these 100 deities have nothing to do with my practice. Buddhism isn't monolithic. There are basic ideas that the different schools share, that make them Buddhist, but beyond that there is a lot of variation (84,000 dharma doors and all that). So be careful about declaring what constitutes real Buddhists and real Buddhism -- you really aren't speaking for your co-religionists in the East or West, only yourself.

I understand that the dieties don't exist independant of ourselves. In fact, this is what I said in my first post, that the deities are the aggregates and the elements as they truly are. I am not disputing this. What I am questioning is your view that the dieties live in some "platonic realm" or whatever is was. You are the one who said that vajrayana was about having dialouges with deities. This seems to be a very dualistic and simplistic way to view vajrayana. Vajrayana is not polytheism and the writings and teachings of all the Tibetan masters support this. If you don't agree with that, then that is fine, but it doesn't help your cause to come on here and say that you are a representative of the one and only true Buddhist view when you clearly seem to have confusion yourself about what that view actually is.

If you really believe this, why don't you ask them about their opinion on this matter, and report back to us?...

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

Samanthabhadra wrote:These gods are in and around us, they form our bodies, they orchester this empirical reality for us and they exist in the noumena. The Vajarasattva consorts who appear in male and female forms are real they are not symbolic, they emanate from me not separate from me.

So, ask them if secular Buddhism be tolerated. I think they should have some very enlightened views on this matter....

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

'Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. Yu will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha"Ajahn Chah

The only view to establish is the view of emptiness free from extremes, the only path that is "valid" Buddhism is the one which teaches the four noble truths and leads one to liberation from suffering (which is pretty much all forms of Buddhism). The only thing that actually matters is recognizing your own innate Buddha Nature, by whatever term you understand that, and abiding in that.

If you are holding the *Proper* view as taught by Buddhism, how could the question of tolerance even arise in your mind stream? What is there that exists that you would tolerate or not tolerate? Its meaningless. How could you even consider that one Dharma path was "Superior" to any others, or "more real" than any others? The proper view holds no position and pays no heed to the positions of others. It certainly doesn't stand by and judge one view as "right" and another view as "wrong". Even the view I am speaking of here is eventually abandoned, not clung to. Once it is realized, one abides in the realization and does not dwell on the concept. When the two truths are really comprehended and integrated into your mind, everything becomes "Of one taste". The absolute and conventional mix like water into water, and one no longer makes distinctions between this and that. This is true non-dual view.

You say that the gods are in and around us, forming our bodies. Yet when I look at the material of my body, I find no gods. I only find that the body is nothing more than organs, and the organs nothing more than systems and processes, and these are nothing more than simple life forms that perform various functions, and these in turn are composed of smaller things. Even as I cannot find anything you would call a "self" within my body or mind, I do not find anything you call a "god" in my body or mind either. Even if I found such a thing, it would be dependently arisen, composed of the elements, and purely a concept created by my own mind. Upon examination any god I found in my body is just this- my belief in a dependently arisen being as being real. This is in fact dualistic thinking in a nut-shell.

I would go back to the study board and the cushion if I were you, one can never take enough care in trying to understand these profound teachings.

mirage wrote:I get the impression that every time there is a discussion about comparing Buddhism with other esoteric doctrines, it boils down to "Well, yes, it sounds exactly the same, except Buddhism says that none of this stuff ultimately exists, so this is totally different."

That just about sums it up.

Dharma describes a kind of reality. It is the truth of our situation. Luckily for us, it also describes a means of ridding ourselves of the lies we tell ourselves, our habits of hatred and ill-will and so on, and directly apprehending that reality and realizing it for ourselves.

So if you pick up any book that has any relevance at all to the world we inhabit, you will find some connection to Dharma. If something has truth value, it has truth value, no?

I think this is one reason why we should be respectful of all branches of knowledge and cultural traditions, even those we disagree with. How else are we to learn anything if we just assume our understanding as it is is necessarily correct?

mirage wrote:I get the impression that every time there is a discussion about comparing Buddhism with other esoteric doctrines, it boils down to "Well, yes, it sounds exactly the same, except Buddhism says that none of this stuff ultimately exists, so this is totally different."

That just about sums it up.

Dharma describes a kind of reality. It is the truth of our situation. Luckily for us, it also describes a means of ridding ourselves of the lies we tell ourselves, our habits of hatred and ill-will and so on, and directly apprehending that reality and realizing it for ourselves.

So if you pick up any book that has any relevance at all to the world we inhabit, you will find some connection to Dharma. If something has truth value, it has truth value, no?

I think this is one reason why we should be respectful of all branches of knowledge and cultural traditions, even those we disagree with. How else are we to learn anything if we just assume our understanding as it is is necessarily correct?

Very well said!

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that"—Bill Shankly

Someone said 'false flag' - This thread is an amusing example of how materialist 'science types' -that means you, Samanthabhadra- misunderstand religion and philosophy. It's not so much a misunderstanding as a willful refusal to try and understand, and it seems to come straight from all those from school-yard 'debates' about what clothes or music are 'cool' - Intellectually, it really is just a 'Fail'.

You and your pals will be sniggering at my po-faced bluntness by now, but it's you that I've just described, so go ahead and laugh at yourselves . Now that I've 'blown your cover', you'll be even more disappointed than you were when it turned out that few here either identified with or wanted to identify with what you assumed to be your accurate p*%%-takes/satires. You may still laugh at my lack of subtlety, as well as how others let their ingrained "expect-the-best-from-others" politeness allow them to be subconsciously "taken in", but -going back to my playground reference- we all know that most in the west who, like yourself, take some interest in science have suffered the kind of treatment (being labelled 'geeks' and otherwise weak and insignificant) that you're now trying to repackage as 'science-v.-religion'. Credit to you, atleast, for managing to imitate an adolescent _ _

The trouble with your whole act is that Buddhism is not idealism - It starts off with an understanding of reality that philosophers classify as nihilism, i.e. the denial that either mind or matter really exist - however much Buddhist practice continues in directions that complicate this simple picture to the point where 'nihilism' no longer applies. I was actually surprised to find, on another thread, that the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna can sound like any neuroscientist at face value:

mind has the nature of an illusion

;

the foundational consciousness tooAppears to be real though it is false

;

The mind is but a mere name;Apart from its name it exists as nothing;So view consciousness as a mere name;Name too has no intrinsic nature.

.

Crucially,

"All of this is but one's mind,"That which was stated by the Able OneIs to alleviate the fear of the childish;It is not [a statement] of [final] truth.

From your point of view, materialism is perhaps 'tougher' than nihilism, because in the materialist view there's an utterly alien reality out there that we can never compete with because we don't exist and it does. On the other hand, nihilism is bleaker; more 'grown-up' - There's nothing to fall back on, and in the case of the Buddhist view, your mental continuum will probably still have to deal with this long after you're dead.

I look forward to future developments with interest, but wonder if the thread might wind down now

Last edited by undefineable on Fri Apr 19, 2013 2:20 am, edited 6 times in total.

"Removing the barrier between this and that is the only solution" {Chogyam Trungpa - "The Lion's Roar"}